Challenge Modes - need help

can you help me a little with optimalizing my challenge mode group ? Which specializations would be best, which talents, glyphs and some good tips ?

Group: Blood dk, Holy paladin, Warrior, Mage, Warlock

Ofc we'll look at some gold videos.
What we know - more sockets gear = better, invisible potions, dps flask-potions
Is there something more what we could use ?
But main question is still: spec, talents, glyphs

For talents specs and glyphs, its completely situational. for instance a blood dk will spec chillblains to kite in stormstout or jade serpent but somewhere else he may face the choice between grouping adds up (gorefiends grasp) or stunning them (remorseless winter).

This isn't something you can get a list of off of the forums. You need to know what situations a dungeon will place you in and decide for yourself what the most appropriate tools are to deal with the situation.

Talents and glyphs are something that you situationally can change depending on the challenge mode, your group or even the fight, but in general specs focused on aoe damage and especially cc should work fine. This is what I use for my dk 90% of the time: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/tool/tal...lator#d!020001 (situationally swapping in chillblains, death siphon or gorefiends grasp). You can (and most will) try to minimax gear all you want, but in the end of the day that's really only relevant if you aim to place really high on the ladder (and for that a perfect setup is far more important). To get gold all you basically need to do is to execute the pulls properly (know how many packs you can take, and how to chain your ccs/cds properly) and have people know their dps rotations for boss fights.

Group is really good for CM's. Frost mage/destro lock will absolutely wreck trash, and bladestorm as well...I would look to pull large packs of trash and just annihilate it within an IBF -> remorseless.

Remember to always start with CD's and then transition into stuns. You want vengeance to build up during your big CD's and then finish them off during the stun.

That's it, really. Watch a bunch of gold videos and find a few tricks (4 people clicking purify in shado pan should be obvious but I see people not doing it).

Also for scarlet monastery you might want your DK to look into control undead on one of the ghosts. Do it right and it's an absolutely free gold.

Soon after I resubscribe to WoW in a month, I plan to do Challenge modes for fun, experience and perhaps VP cap via weekly CM quests with my brother. I agreed to be a Brewmaster Monk while my brother will be a Resto Druid. Both of us are feeling confident to try out CMs after countless chain pulls in Heroic pugs and good teamwork since we scream at eachother for Cooldowns and notifications as our computers are only a meter distant.

So... I've three questions that I've been wondering:

Is CC and invis potions truly needed when trash steamrolling isn't an option? I've watched a couple of CM videos on youtube and not every dungeon needed CC (can't remember which).

When guildmates can't be an option for whatever reason (they don't do much Challenge Modes), we thought of getting the DPS via pugging (with inspection ofc) with a mage/shaman/BM hunter guaranteed spot for Bloodlust. However, is pugging for CMs a good idea even if we're not going for gold rank and instead for weekly quest/bronze/experience?

Does a brewmaster monk and resto druid have good synergy for Challenge Modes? I know Brewmasters are good because of high damage output under vengeance and mobility, but I don't know about Resto Druids.

Just having a blood DK tank gives you a huge advantage, as long as he knows his class and isn't 'too good' to kite.

Brewmasters are superior to blood, and I'm not sure what you are refering to with "too good to kite". It is quite rare that you actually have to kite any packs if you execute the pull properly, which also enables your tank to put out full vengence dps.

Is CC and invis potions truly needed when trash steamrolling isn't an option? I've watched a couple of CM videos on youtube and not every dungeon needed CC (can't remember which).

You can do every challenge mode without any invis pots/single target ccs. Having aoe stuns is obviously almost mandatory (it'd probably be doable without, but you'd have to take slightly smaller packs), and some runs will be significantly harder without invis pots.

When guildmates can't be an option for whatever reason (they don't do much Challenge Modes), we thought of getting the DPS via pugging (with inspection ofc) with a mage/shaman/BM hunter guaranteed spot for Bloodlust. However, is pugging for CMs a good idea even if we're not going for gold rank and instead for weekly quest/bronze/experience?

The tank and healer knowing what they are doing is probably 90% of the challenge mode group, and for all but a few challenge modes (like stormstout) you can easily carry pug dps through them, even to gold (boosting people in cms is where I get most of my gold from:P).

Does a brewmaster monk and resto druid have good synergy for Challenge Modes? I know Brewmasters are good because of high damage output under vengeance and mobility, but I don't know about Resto Druids.

Brewmasters are amazing for challenge modes. Resto druids aren't quite at the level of say disc, with less damage and a weaker tank cd, however they still provide a fair bit of useful things (roar, mobility & heart of wild are all great tools) to a challenge mode grp and won't be a hinder for times well over gold. Having a balance offspec/gear could probably be useful for some bosses.

I appreciate your reply, Cookie
Unfortunately his Offspec is feral cat and he hasn't optimized his DPS as he mostly uses it for dailies. Guess I'll just tell him to use Heart of the Wild on cooldown at bosses and throw Wraths whenever possible.

Np. Him being unable to go dps isn't really going to cost you any gold times, it's just a bit helpful in some circumstances. The only fight where you might run into trouble without your healer dpsing is the last boss in stormstout (and it's definitely doable with a full time healer, been there done that:P), and heart of the wild conveniently takes care of that^^.